Grades are Done!

Greetings 753ers! I just finished grading. Grades are in the system and envelopes are in the GSLIS office to pick up at your convenience.

Thanks for a great class!

Poll

surveys - Take Our Poll

Survey

Please take our survey:

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/CC559F583A269DE8/

Second Life Module

http://l2course.wordpress.com/mod-second-life/

For those who might be interested, links to readings for LIS768.

Books

Good Morning! One of you asked what books I had in class on first weekend.

Elizabeth Castro - Creating a Web Page with HTML (Visual Quickstart)

Elizabeth Castro - HTML for the World Wide Web (5th Edition)

Wendy Lehnert - Web Wizards Guide to HTML (2002) (Older but very straight forward)

We also have all of the Web resources listed on the class syllabus pages. I’ll be bringing the books to class. See you Saturday!

Reading Blogs

I’m starting the grading of your blogs - GOOD STUFF.

Just a heads up: one important part of the task was inserting links in all of your posts! Please look over your posts in the next few days and I will see you soon.

Mishawaka Library Bans Social Networking

Via the South Bend Tribune and a bunch of folks who emailed me:

You can no longer use MySpace, Facebook or other “social networking sites” at Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library.

Fights, lewd language and cars being blocked in the parking lot by teenagers are among the problems Director Dave Eisen said have plagued the downtown library lately.

He told library board members that adults have complained about not feeling safe at the library. Eisen and his staff believe the teenagers are there to use MySpace, Facebook and other social sites.

Oh boy. This is my hometown library. It saddens me that the space between “social networking sites” to “not feeling safe” seems so short. The article notes the ban is probably working:

It might have worked, as there were few teenagers going to the computer room by 3:30 p.m. Friday, a half hour after it normally begins to fill up. There were few teenagers even coming in to the computer room at the library.

If anyone has thoughts or would want to blog this, feel free to comment or post:

http://tametheweb.com/2008/03/18/no-myspace-facebook-at-mishawaka-library/

http://tametheweb.com/2008/03/19/an-sjcpl-librarian-responds-to-mishawakas-ban/

http://tametheweb.com/2008/03/22/stopped-by-mishawaka-penn-harris-public-library-to-see-for-myself/

Web Site Review Assignment

Just an FYI: We added an option to review the new Chicago Public Library Web site instead of the Dominican library Web site. Check it out here: http://lis753.wordpress.com/project-presentation/ 

Heading Down Under

Greetings LIS753ers!

Your blogging has been top notch. Keep it up. Also be thinking about the two reviews that you’ll have due by the time we meet again.

I hope you saw the posting on the LISSA blog about our upcoming visit by the Committee on Accreditation. We may even get to meet members of the committee during our next weekend together or you may hear from them via email or get to meet with them on campus.

I head for Australia on Thursday and plan to be connected in all of the major cities. If you email me and don’t hear for a couple of days, it’s probably because I’m away from connectivity.

Please have a good couple of weeks and a great spring break!

Great Stuff

This might be useful for your web reviews and your projects:

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2008/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/ 

Smashing Magazine has written an in-depth and illustrated guide to Web design. Anyone who is interested in usability and user-centered design may want to check out their approach:

Don’t make users think
Don’t squander users’ patience
Manage to focus users’ attention
Strive for feature exposure
Make use of effective writing
Strive for simplicity
Don’t be afraid of the white space
Communicate effectively with a “visible language”
Conventions are our friends
Test early, test often